National Screenwriters Day Screenwriting Competition

Become part of the most important screenwriting celebration of the year — National Screenwriters Day. The top 3 winners will be announced as #NationalScreenwritersDay is trending on Twitter on January 5th!

GRAND PRIZE

Attend 3 Day Producer’s Event in Burbank, CA. This is a ScreenwritingU group event where their best writers meet 15 producers and 6 managers. You’ll get up to $1000 in travel/hotel expenses.

Deadlines

Competition Rules

This is a skill-based competition where the quality of writing, decisions, and presentation will be judged to determine the quarter-finalists, semi-finalists, finalists, and winners.

The first three rounds of judging will be based entirely upon the screenplay you submit. The fourth round to determine the winners will include an on-the-phone interview and will represent 20% of your score for the final decision.

Judging is based upon the specific criteria that has been determined by National Screenwriters Day and ScreenwritingU. All decisions by the judges are final and cannot be disputed in any way.

You must submit entry and payment through our online system.

All persons from anywhere in the world are eligible; however, the submitted material must be in English.

Multiple entries per person is acceptable, as long as each entry is for a different script.

Substitutions of either corrected pages or new drafts of the entered material are not allowed. Please proofread your script carefully before submitting.

We only accept submissions of feature scripts, of 125 pages or less, with the minimum level of formatting for a feature script. We do not accept novels, spec scripts for TV shows, Reality Show pitches, stage plays, treatments/outlines, or feature scripts longer than 125 pages.

All submitted material must be original, and all rights must be wholly owned by the writer(s) submitting the material.

Material written by writing teams must be submitted by one of the writers on the team, with consent of the other(s) on the team.

Scripts adapted from books, comic books, produced TV or movies, or any other source, must either be a project you own the rights to, or public domain.

The NSD Competition or any other partner, employee or agent associated with this competition claims no ownership nor first right of option to any original screenplay submitted to this competition. All ownership and rights to the scripts submitted to this competition remains with the original rights holders until and unless other agreements are made. It is nevertheless recommended that you register your script with the U.S. Copyright office and/or the Writers Guild of America, both of which can be done online.

You understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes, and, from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

You also understand that our staff, judges, and producers may have worked with, be working with, or in the future could work with concepts, ideas, themes, characters, etc. that are similar to yours, and you waive any claim that National Screenwriters Day, ScreenwritingU, the judges, or producers involved may have used your ideas or parts of your work in any way.

Except where prohibited by law, participation in the competition constitutes each entrant’s consent to the festival and its agents’ and competition sponsors’ use of entrants’ names, likenesses, photographs, and/or personal information for promotional purposes in any media, worldwide, without further payment or consideration. All uses of an entrants’ information are in accordance with our Privacy Policy.